Saturday, April 5, 2008

Goldfish......

My four year old has adopted my next door neighbor as his local Grandfather. He talks to him all day through the fence or when he gets out of the yard he follows this poor neighbor of ours around. Our neightbor has a pond in his backyard. It had a selection of goldfish in it last year. He guesses he didn't winterize it that well this winter, because a number of the goldfish in it died.

My son stood on the edge of the pond as my neighbor cleaned it out just a few days ago. He asked my neighbor if he could take the dead fish home because they were his friends. Of course and thankfully my neighbor said no. But that didn't deter my son at all. When my neighbor turned his back, my son stole the dead goldfish (his friends) and took them home and buried them in our garden plot.

When I asked him why he did it he said, "But MOM I wanted them." We laughed long and hard. The question is how do you teach your little one that stealing something from someones yard is wrong, when everytime you think about it you begin to laugh?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I don't think I'd make him dig them up and give them back... eww.

But it might be a good idea to have him tell the neighbor what he did. Maybe arrange in advance with the neighbor to have him replace them (with live ones of course - they're like 14 cents at Walmart).

And I don't think you'll ever be able to help giggling! Why would you want to when they're so darn cute?

Unknown said...

That's just too cute.

C. Michelle Jefferies said...

Our neighbor was the one who actually told us about the stolen goldfish. He thought it was so funny that he'd name him his friends and steal them in the first place.

Leave it to my little ones to get to know my new neighbors quickly.

An interesting thing is that my neighbors mother was my relief society president when we lived in Provo. Small world ehe?

Michelle

Pendragon Inman said...

that's just sad.

Don't you ever let your kids out to play around with real friends? You know, the living, breathing type?

tehehehe--poor tim.
At least he buried him, ehe? I mean, it could have been WAAAAY worse. :)

loves

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